


packed to the brim with thrills and spills

by suitablyskippy



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Minor Violence, Pre-Sburb/Sgrub, but jake prefers adventures, everyone likes jake
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-10
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 08:04:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/558710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>GG: Are you there, J?</p>
  <p>GT: This honestly isnt the optimum time!</p>
  <p>GT: I am caught up in intimate psychological warfare with a mahoosive flying maggot do you mind if i buzz you back in a mo.</p>
</blockquote>there's an infinite number of ways to keep yourself entertained, even when you live on your own on an island of monsters up the butt-end of nowhere.<p>you just have to know where to look.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I know youre all about hijinks.

**Author's Note:**

> a.k.a. my love letter to jake english

Once quarterly you get up before the light cracks its yolk on the mountain, and you make the pre-dawn trek to the rough stone steps your grandma hacked into it before you were even a twinkle in the eye of whatever stork dropped you. The hot wet fogs curling through the fern thickets turn to treacherous scree slides with moss in the cracks: you scramble up over crags and ledges here, not creepers and swamp, and the operation requires devotion of focus enough you sign out of Pesterchum. You’ve got faith in your buds to know what’s what. 

You clamber up to where the tree line is something to scope from an aerial perspective and the bright dawn light is clear as high-def and cool as Connery. Morning mist coils over the rock plateau you’ve heaved yourself onto, and you’re late, because you’re always late: it’s a lickety-split of a second till the _whum. whum. whum._ of the rotors’ descending roar sets your jacket to flapping and your hair to whipping and the air to something a heck of a lot like screaming, and you hotfoot it to the vast X drawn out in white and peeling paint across the plateau. 

A helicopter door whirs open. 

Morning sirs!

A sizeable shrinkwrapped something with a waxed parachute tumbles from the sky and you catch it in your sylladex as it sways down towards you. RAISINS, says the label. 

Thanks awfully! you yell. You catch a full zipped coolbag as it falls and switch it out with the empty one you’ve brought along in your sylladex, tearing off the makeshift parachute and shunting aside a pile of muddy vertebrae you found unearthed by the storm the week before to make space. As ever i truly appreciate the job you gents do bringing me all this useful shit. I quite literally couldnt live without you haha! 

You keep up the repartee on your end because you’re pretty sure they’d be hot to cultivate a convo if only they could catch an earful, and even if they never catch an earful, you’ve got imagination galore to fill in the gaps they leave in your real-life chats. 

It’s exactly like having company, probably! 

They drop you a family pack of loo rolls, and a family pack of soaps and shampoo, and detergent and a parcel of nails and screws and useful pieces of wood and wire and a new pair of fine-nosed pliers though you’re pretty sure you got three of those last quarter too, and a refill for your glue gun and four double packs of batteries, in sizes mixed enough you’re set whether your mp2 player runs flat or your crank-up torch the size of a microwave runs flat; and you store them all away, shuffling them around interesting things you’ve dug up recently and dirty plates you’ve forgotten to wash and should have left at home in the sink. In return, you host one half of a conversation on the topic of storms in the tropics, and you apologize for whatever of the sea scum stench they’re catching up above there: the dregs of the seafloor’ve been belched onto the beach and the gross foam left behind reeks of dead things and elderly seaweed. You explain in a yell how the rain hammered down so hard you couldn’t see the vines outside your windows and how the winds wrenched trees straight from the ground, and you yell up how the next morning you found more translucent white corpses sprawled amongst the wreckage than you’ve ever put there yourself. 

You yell on as your throat scratches hoarse how you’ve been burning the bodies, one by one, all day every day for the last six days. 

Well cheers guys, you shout, when you’ve got everything there is to get. The rotors are thrumming back up to speed as you’re racing for the shelter of the cliff face, hands over your head, debris and shale rattling down around you. It is as always a pleasure doing business with you! 

The helicopter _whumwhumwhums_ up and away and you squint into the howling wind, waving till it’s gone. You’ve a sizeable clue who sends those guys but it’s not a point you like to dwell on. It’s late morning and the skies are clear, and all’s peachy. 

(Last April they didn’t show at all, and that’s another point you steer clear of considering.) 

Your storeroom’s stocked and your cans are stacked and your cookalizer still whirs on with the tap of a switch; and all’s peachy. 

Peachy peachy, you agree. 

You take the path back down at a hectic sprint and your boots skid wildly over shifting cascading scree, one step taking you meters when the ground underfoot travels too, hurtling and hollering till you catch your foot on a jag of rock that never doesn’t slip your mind: and you travel the last twenty meters somersaulting head over heels down the mountainside to crashland in a frog-filled moss thicket.

Bright green red-beaked parrots explode shrieking into the sky. You wheeze and roll onto your back, consult your watch. Descent in seventeen seconds: absolutely a new personal best! 

A frog the crimson of a cocoa pod hops onto your stomach and croaks belligerently. They’re nosing up all around you to find out what the commotion is and if you weren’t so bogged down by the shit you’ve got lined up today you’d stick around and make a fuss – let them know you care! – but the shit you have lined up today is remarkably boggy, and they’re just going to have to wait. 

You heave yourself up, brush the worst of the gravel out the worst of your damage, and start for the shore. 

\-- GT began pestering GG \--

GT: Good morning madam! 

GG: Good afternoon, sir! 

Where the moss turns to creepers there’s a sucking sound with every step as the waterlogged soil tries to reclaim your boots. Birds hoot furiously above you, monsters howling in the distance from your sea; the air is heavy and hot and smells of rotting leaf mulch, and you book the distance to where the treeline breaks in your briskest gait. The centaurs migrate during storm season to the highest point of the meadowed regions and you navigate the Jake-sized droppings they’ve left behind with one hand pinching your nose shut and the other out for balance when you invariably trip in the Jake-sized hoofprints the pasture’s stamped with. 

They’re too far away for you to hear their whinnies from here, and the silence is so queerly eerie you catch yourself rifling thoughtlessly through the blank cards of your strife deck. 

You force your primary attentions back to maintaining the vertical aspects of your bodily alignment. The gulls are screeching from the shore. 

GT: How are events shaping up at your end jane have you engaged in many wacky antics yet today? 

GG: Events are perfectly formed at my end, thank you!  
GG: Although to be perfectly honest with you, I have hardly engaged in any antics today, wacky or otherwise. 

GT: Aw man thats too bad.  
GT: What about hijinks i know youre all about hijinks! 

GG: Hijinks neither! 

A vast off-white seahorse the size of several of you sprawls half-stranded at the lip of the beach, waves pulling up and back around it like a wet will-they-won’t-they shroud. Congealed purple smears gloopily across its partial skull and tattered frills. The storm’s thrown it up and bashed it in and if you let it sit it’s gonna spend months turning to toxic soup on rotten bones, so you’re set to do what you’ve been doing all week: turn the carcass to ash. 

You survey it from the meadow’s final fringe of grass, fists on hips. 

It’s gonna be a doozy of a job. 

Well there is no time for dilly dallying when there are monsters the shore must be rid of. Get to it english! 

You roll back the sleeves of your jacket as you approach, seize the creature round its elongated throat in a classic headlock maneuver, and wrench. It doesn’t budge. You heave your whole weight behind it and something cracks grossly inside the body. It fails to budge. Hup! you say, and after one last go it resolutely will not budge. 

Oh for the love of fuck. 

You rifle through your sylladex. Your armory can be discarded, carefully – you lay down your jacket on the sand before removing each haphazard gun stack one by one – as can your supplies for later. A single bicycle wheel from a bicycle you’ve never seen, an unopened mystery crate still shrinkwrapped from July’s delivery (scatty’s what you’d term yourself, you’re miles from disorganized!), the contents of the day’s delivery, a stack of blank DVDs waiting for Roxy’s next lucky-dip zip file, a bag of rubbish you absolutely intended to take out to the ditch you use for compost but entirely forgot about till now – you eject it all onto the beach and shunt your grandma’s elderly bomb-worn lab up further into the space it’s made: and you captchalogue the corpse. 

It _reeks_. 

It reeks like you got down on your hands and knees and jammed your head inside its swollen stomach for a rotten fishy muffler, it reeks like your island’s going to if you leave every bloated body on it in its place till the sunny season. Gross, you say, dazedly, and you try to hold your breath as you stumble through the stones to the driest spot you can scope from where you are but your sylladex is an abstraction entirely unavoidable on the physical plane, and it doesn’t make the faintest difference. 

You eject the cadaver and hit the sand the same time it does, except where it makes a wet and meaty squelch of disaffected decomposition on contact with the stones you just retch, and retch, and retch until the canned pears you ate from the end of a penknife that morning come back to haunt you in a splatter pattern on the sand. 

Jane’s last message is flickering. 

Holy cow, you say, absorbed in a sudden fit of extremely brief and late-onset melancholia, and you wipe your mouth in your sleeve. 

GT: Escapades then or larks. How about frolics surely you would not let a day slip past you without smashing a frolicsome cream pie to its unsuspecting face!! 

GG: No antics, no hijinks, neither escapades nor larks. And no frolics either.  
GG: I must say, I’ve been hardly in the mood of late. :( 

GT: Yikes this is a startling development. 

Bladekind isn’t your department so the hunting knife tucked into the forefront of your sylladex is useless as a weapon and perfect as a tool. You kneel down beside the corpse and, nerve as steeled as you can steel it, cruising somewhere close to chromium, you dig into the flesh of its tail. 

Times like these, you know how much you appreciate the distraction of a pal in the inbox. 

GT: Whats the dealio jane you know my ear is always ready and willing to receive conversation of all varieties especially those which pertain to feelings etc. 

GG: Oh, it’s really not a big deal!  
GG: It’s just my dad. 

GT: A stand up gent your father.  
GT: All is well with him i trust. 

You’ve practiced your technique over the years and you’ve got a method for most monsters you’ve met. Centaurs you shoot can be eaten if the wound doesn’t smell and so long as you don’t look at the unnervingly humanoid faces while engaged in the process of jointing them. The vast cave spiders burn like torchwood and if a live one wanders too close to a blazing dead one it’ll go up as well. The crab creatures lurk around the edges of the clearing your broken tower lies in, and the first time you found yourself confronted by one of their crustaceous cadavers you grew so impatient with the lack of effect your knife was having on its chitinous shell that you jammed an emergency flare down between the join of its abdomen to its thorax, lit it, ran for it, and spattered the jungle for a hundred meters in grossly human red meat you spent the next two days attempting to clear. 

GG: Absolutely! Unfortunately, a stand-up gent who is currently on business in Spokane. 

GT: Ive not the foggiest what that means but it sure doesnt sound like hes downstairs watching tv. 

GG: About three hundred miles away, is what it means. 

But though you’ve seen seahorses curling underwater when you’ve ventured early morning swimming close to shore, and though you’ve clapped eyes on them skipping through the sky across the surf when you’ve been high up enough on the cliffs to see that far to sea, you’ve never met one up close and personal like this before. You assumed they died in the water and dealt with themselves that way. Its flesh is rubbery and its frills flutter unnervingly lifelike every time a gust of sea breeze blows by you, and you really really want to be done with the deconstruction so you can move onto the barbecue. 

GT: Oh heck jane thats a distance and a half! 

GG: :( 

You yank at the tail and with one wet snap the final piece of gristle keeping it attached is gone, and your behind hits the sand very suddenly. Oof, you say, and roll over. 

You dice your dead because you like to keep your fires small and dense. It’s all over faster that way: fires have been something you’ve preferred not to dwell on for years. 

(Nine of them.) 

Down the beach where you cleared your cache is where you’ve left your kindling, scattered in with your guns like a high-stakes game of pik-up-stix. 

You hurry to retrieve it. 

GG: My neighbor has been coming round periodically to make sure I’m brushing my teeth and not intoxicated, and Dad’s due home on Saturday.  
GG: But all the same...

GT: Say no more i fully comprendez vous. 

The can of accelerant is sloshing near-empty after a straight week of clearing storm damage and you try to go light with it, judicious splashes across the tinder tucked between the seahorse and the sand. The tinder is old delivery crates that you took out back and shot till they fragmented small enough to burn nicely. You scratch a match down the side of its box and throw it. 

With a _whump_ and a cushion of warm air to the face, the flames billow up. 

GT: No wonder youre not feeling up to your usual capers i cant say i do either sometimes when i get to musing on matters of miles and such. 

Fronds of seahorse crisp and sizzle and if you shut your eyes and ignore the salt behind the smoke it’s exactly like a woodlands campfire, and you know it is a graven fact that unless you’re a righteous maverick on the run or an actual baddie, all campfires need company. 

You unequip your compu-belt and you equip your skulltop, and you turn your attentions absolutely to Jane. 

GG: It’s an awful relief to hear from you really, Jake. This house has been feeling rather large for just the one occupant! 

GT: Whoa shut the front door who else do you have at chez crocker now!?!  
GT: Is it roxy i bet its roxy! 

GG: Hoo! No, you silly boy.  
GG: I mean you! :B

GT: Uh no i am on the beach burning a bloody huge seahorse monster i am definitely not at yours. 

The flames flicker red green yellow blue through the lights of the eyeglass and you settle down in the sand to watch the show. It’s a rare day you relax on the shore but you’re banking on the fumes of slowly charring monster corpse to keep away everything that fancies you minced; the smell is like a fuse shorting but longer – an electrical stench your friends tell you flesh doesn’t make. And of course you believe them – what would you know, so many years from the last real flesh you smelt scorch! – but the beach still stinks like dust burning on a lit bulb, so you just believe both things at once. Things are a lot simpler that way, you’ve always found. 

GG: ...  
GG: You tell some very strange stories sometimes, Mr English. 

GT: I dont know about strange but take my word for it its a shitty frickin nuisance.  
GT: The bastards so waterlogged im starting to suspect it may be fireproof. 

GG: I’m really not sure how to respond to that. 

GT: I might crack open a can of petrol in a minute to accelerate the process do you reckon that would do the trick? 

GG: Oh my God? 

GT: Huh? Is that a yes do you reckon its a sound idea. 

GG: NO!   
GG: I ‘reckon’ that is an enormously imprudent idea!   
GG: Jake, if you really are beside a fire and not just roleplaying your extremely vivid internal life, PLEASE DO NOT POUR GAS ON IT!!!   
GG: I repeat, PLEASE DO NOT POUR HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE FLUIDS ON THE FIRE!!!!! 

GT: Man alright alright i got you the first time. 

A watermelon you find shrinkwrapped in one of the further reaches of your sylladex serves as a neat pillow when you stretch out on the sand, your hands linked across your stomach and one ankle propped on a knee. Roiling monster-made whirlpools bursting into the waves have sporadically unnerved you over the last half hour, but none of them have ventured close enough for you to catch a glimpse of anything worse than a fringed snout, or a massive paw, or the lash of a tail that’s blatantly unkeen to be toasted. You haven’t felt this relaxed outdoors since the first glorious week you made your brobot’s acquaintance, after it began to attack your predators and before it began to prey on you. 

GT: Hey look i was musing over what you said about being home alone and this may sound foolish to you but i know a fuckton about being home alone so hear me out.   
GT: Sometimes if i get to feeling maybe a little lonesome and jonesing for a buddy in the nighttime what i do is i  
GT: Jeez louise im cringing hardcore here just thinking about it. 

GG: Well gee, don’t feel like you have to say it on my behalf!  
GG: I’m sure these particular pangs will fade away sooner or later, and then I’ll be feeling like an awful goof for even raising the matter. 

GT: No no its no trouble at all i would hate for such a prime pal not to know my top tips and tricks. 

GG: :)  
GG: You’re a rather prime pal yourself, you know! 

GT: Well shucks.   
GT: Look its like this uh.   
GT: *adjusts specs in readiness*

GG: *Adjusts spectacles in solidarity*

GT: Heh well what i do is sort of rest on my arm just enough so it becomes one hundred percent blood free and then it is a matter of moments to utilize the lifeless limb as a surrogate chum.  
GT: If you shut your peepers and tap into your imaginative juices its for all the world as though someone else is touching you! 

GG: ...

GT: It’s a cinch really in fact its a piece of cake.  
GT: (Cake do you get it?? Hehe.) 

You’d never tell Roxy you get lonely because she’s a secret apocalypse kid, and you might not share your island with human beings but at least you share a planet with them: sulking at Roxy on solitude seems supremely unsporting. 

GG: ............   
GG: I get it.   
GG: I think.   
GG: Jake, uh. Hoo hoo!!!   
GG: Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about? 

GT: Thats a toughie. I guess all i know is im definitely talking about what i think im talking about but i dont know how this could be corroborated against the notion youve got.  
GT: Wowie the mind sure is an enigma when you take a breather to puzzle it. 

GG: Sure is! D: 

You’d never tell Strider you get lonely because he’s deactivated your internet before; and probably you _would_ be a better man if you understood the True Meaning Of Loneliness, but you don’t feel the terrible twelve hours where the only real voice you heard was Sylvester Stallone’s (and that at the tail-end of a hallucination brought on by spending forty minutes spinning in a circle in the middle of the kitchen) taught you anything at all except that Strider was to be kept in the dark about everything he could ever possibly misconstrue as an open invitation for your self-betterment. 

GT: Now we have got that confession out of the way however i really cannot big up the scheme enough.  
GT: Its a real peachy practice it is most gratifying. You can think of anyone and shalakazam there is your bros fond petting about your bod! 

GG: ‘Your bro’???  
GG: Dirk??????? 

GT: Naturally but he is not my only bro is he now jane.  
GT: The fine femininity of yourself and roxy has never impeded my classification of you as top bros id be up crap creek without. 

GG: You think of me when you  
GG: Gosh I’m really really not sure why these are facts you feel you should be sharing, Jake! 

GT: I am practicing emotional honesty.  
GT: Also offering you an insider tip seeing as how you are high and dry and home alone without the parentals. Or i guess parental sorry. 

GG: I think I’m going to have a quick natter with Roxy, if you don’t mind!!! 

\-- GG ceased pestering GT --

GT: In fact full emotional honesty necessitates me telling you it is actually usually my grandma i find my thoughts turning to. Thats kind of sappy though isnt it haha.  
GT: Oh sure catch you on the flipside! 

You didn’t think you’d tell Jane you get lonely, either, but every hero’s a sucker for a damsel in distress and if knowing she wasn’t alone in being alone perked up her day even the slightest amount, then you’re glad to have let the feline from its bag. 

You pull a shard of wood from the fire and begin to test how fast you can pass a hand through its flames without burning yourself. 

\-- TG began pestering GT \--

TG: u put janey in a rihgt flap u dirty boi  
TG: durrrrty  
TG: dutty  
TG: u dutty boi

GT: Bonjour miss. What are you doing up at this godless hour? 

TG: bit a this  
TG: bit a taht  
TG: lets get sum shit STRAITHG tho  
TG: *ughh strahght whatevs

GT: Of course i am at your service! 

TG: k  
TG: wen u told young miss crockar u think of her as u touch urself  
TG: wat did u mean by toush yourself

Whoa! you say, and jackknife upright so suddenly your watermelon pillow begins to roll rotundly away down the beach. This is a situation too critical to be handled to the peaceful audio backdrop of the crash of waves and spit of burning beastflesh; this is a situation that requires the hearty vocal expression of your dissatisfaction. Voice command goddammit!! 

GT: Freaking heck in a handcart that was confiential intel for janes eyes only!  
GT: Sometimes a chap just requires the comforting pat of another on his arm to say you know youre not doing so bad are you and it is not as though i am swimming in folks bursting to lay on hands over here is it roxy!! 

TG: and thtaz it is it...  
TG: IS IT.........

GT: Yeah ok maybe sometimes if i venture unexpectedly to the mystical lands beyond waking and my whole arm goes dead i might just dupe myself into the assurance ive the hug of a homey about my person.  
GT: Or i might not because guess what im bally fucking mortified she told you and im not exactly busting to spill right now!!! 

TG: u sure thats it......

GT: Why what the shiznit else could i have possibly been intimating to the dear friend i trusted with such PRIVATE AND INTIMATE INFO. 

You’re not too hot on showing a weak front to either the seahorse you’re roasting beside you or any of its past friends and lovers that may be watching you unseen from the frothing deeps so you shout it into your knees. Conveniently, that’s also where you’ve hidden your face away from embarrassment, so that’s two levitating sheep monsters nailed with one bullet. 

TG: jamk i <3 u but  
TG: wat do u srsly think she thout u were hintining  
TG: *ting

GT: Eh? 

TG: u saucy minx

GT: Youre a sauced minx more like.  
GT: What do you mean i dont get it. 

TG: ..................  
TG: ........................  
TG: ...... dotdotdot ..................... elliiiiiiiipses.....

GT: ?? 

TG: ‘intimaet info’  
TG: ‘torch urself’  
TG: *touch lolol  
TG: more dotss...................................dotsdotdut...............  
TG: entire fuckin plague of measles buildnig up the tension   
TG: .................

The fire crackles. The wood fragment you’ve been screwing about with burns down to your fingers and you hurl it back into the main conflagration without even noticing you’re scorched. 

Something is occurring to you. 

GT: Wait hang on are you saying what i believe youre saying or. 

TG: that depednens duz it not

GT: Are you referring to acts perhaps committed in the sanctity of a mans bedroom or bathroom or kitchen or whatsoever room he chooses to the accompaniment of in fact sanctity or at least peace and quiet and maybe some thoughts potentially construed as unsavory best suited for an extremely private domain such as the net or a magazine?? 

TG: the kitchen  
TG: rly jake

GT: Cmon is that what youre on about?????? 

TG: remind me nvr 2 eat round yr place  
TG: but  
TG: yup ;) 

Screw that tough-faced veneer! You splat on your back in the sand. There’s something white wheeling such a way up amongst the straggled clouds you’ve no clue if it’s a dragon or a whale or an ordinary albatross, and you don’t give the most meager shit either way. 

GT: Jiminy fuckin cricket rox you could have out and said it earlier!!!   
GT: Gimme a minute im on damage control oh god.   
GT: Oh god oh god. 

TG: sto psayin o god and go sort yr shit  
TG: goddammit boy

GT: Youre a top notch friend i owe you BIG TIME.  
GT: Oh god oh god oh god...

\-- GT ceased pestering TG \--

TG: top notchest frend in the wurld   
TG: so sweet bein yr top notchiest freind!!!!!   
TG: bluhh  
TG: l8rz j <3

TG  is offline! 

\-- GT began pestering GG \--

\-- GG is offline! --

Oh god, you say. 

The watermelon goes back in your sylladex for later and you hurl the firelighting fluid and the matches after it. Since you chucked shit to the ground making space for the corpse it’s positively roomy in there and any element of puzzle solving is stripped right out to the bones: you file the DVDs back in, the delivery crates, the aged trash bag, the assorted weaponry; you leave the bicycle wheel because heck if you know how you’re ever going to use a bicycle wheel, and you don’t stop even to shake the sand from your jacket before pulling it back on, so deep is the mire of your emotional crisis. 

You switch out your skulltop for your compu-belt once more and seize up a flaming plank from the blaze. It’s almost four in the evening and strips of orange are starting to streak the sky: alone in a murky-dark jungle is not a position you’ve ever fancied finding yourself. 

\-- GT began pestering GG \--

\-- GG is offline! --

Jesu christo, you say. 

The seahorse is a crispy black and purple mess with minimal spit left to its flames. You jam a pistol into either of your pants pockets and hoist your fire higher. It’s twenty minutes to your tower in the daylight unobstructed, but you’ve timed yourself making it in thirteen before, on a good day, wearing just boxers and boots to minimize air resistance: you’re not gonna do it in the nuddy now but you’re gonna try and make it hella fast. 

You strike out for the meadow. Centaurshit glistens salmon pink in the slow setting sundown. 

\-- GT began pestering GG \--

\-- GG is offline! --

Augh consarn it! 

Your flaming torch makes contact with the bright white flank of a double-mouthed jungle cat within moments of stepping back beneath the trees, and it rears up, growling so low it’s fit to tremble bones. 

You toss the torch and leg it. 

\-- TT began pestering GT  \--

TT: Heard you’ve been talking yourself into a jam. 

GT: Oh blimey strider not now im so preoccupied you dont even know! 

TT: Shit, bro, I didn’t mean to interrupt.   
TT: I’m rewiring the robot I built to raise me, monitoring a series of fishing lines precisely calibrated to coordinate tides with seasonal shoal migration, soothing the nerves you frazzled hard in Jane, shouldering the shit Roxy’s yucking up straight from my speakers to my cerebellum – because of you, might I add, and fucking yes I might and check it, I just did – and, as the grotesquely masturbatory cherry seated plump and red in the highest cleft of the already onanistic cupcake, I’ve been squabbling for ten minutes with my own AI for the schadenfreudian pleasure of speaking to you first.   
TT: And I haven’t slept for two and a half days, though for the jack shit that means to me I feel you’d dredge a meaning from it.   
TT: But you’re preoccupied.   
TT: That’s cool, whatever.   
TT: What are you up to? 

You hurl yourself off the path and land rolling. There’s a low and overhanging shelf of rock you’ve found handy in many a similar sitch and below it is where you’re going to stay wedged until the cat stays gone, face down in leaf mulch with your breath held tight. 

TT: Got to the good bit in Avatar?   
TT: Again?   
TT: To shave a laborious point onto what nevertheless seems a question perilously lacking, the good bit here is interchangeably whichever bit you just got done with. 

GT: Ok lets get the facts on display for a moment here.   
GT: Its not my fault the fanciful delights of avatar run thick and fast throughout its two and a quarter hour timespan.   
GT: It is like avatar is a chocolate fountain and the good bits are the chocolate ie ALL OF IT. 

TT: You're objectively wrong, man, and that's all there is to it. 

The moss down here is dark and damp and a tendril of something you’re not entirely sure is inanimate wafts light and curious across your glasses. You blow at it. It curls indignantly; you shut your eyes and think furiously at your compu-belt. 

GT: Seriously dirk things are hectic over here what with my thrill-a-minute life to consider. 

TT: I’ll take your word for it.   
TT: But humor me a moment here, will you?   
TT: Say the microwaved fish dish I sendificated through to you enough weeks ago you’ve most likely lost the recollectable records had contained a soluble tracker.   
TT: Say I’ve been wired into every move you’ve bust since the moment you consumed it.   
TT: Say nighttime entertainment for AR and me these last few lust-filled weeks has constituted scrolling the data to lay down bets waged in conversational privilege on which points in the day were the points in the day you ‘utilized a lifeless limb as a surrogate chum’, to borrow the coyest vernacular version of ‘jacking it’ I’ve ever fucking come across.   
TT: Hilarious ambiguity unintentional but unobjectionable, as I’m sure you’d understand. 

GT: Augh that is NOT WHAT I MEANT AND YOU BLOODY WELL KNOW IT DIRK.  
GT: What price privacy in this modern world of technology and internet wonders i ask you!!! 

TT: Jake, what if I told you I know full well you’ve shirked every duty you’re under right now to kick back with Avatar, because the statistical collation program of your heartbeat I’m running even as we speak goddamned tells me so? 

GT: Uh well if you said that then i would respond with a proud cry of BOLLOCKS TO THAT for i have been racing headlong for my life up till this very instant.   
GT: The jungle is a dicey venue after dark dirk.   
GT: I suspect you of a sneaky bluff. 

There are monkeys hooting energetically across the jungle to each other and agitated parrots offering their commentary, but you can neither hear nor feel the vibrations in the ground that might mark the rumble of that mammoth of a monster and its outrageously pettable paws. You wriggle out and squint into the light: clawmarks raked down a rubber tree yet no sign of the paw that clawed them. 

Optimum conditions! 

You continue on your way at the swiftest pace you have. 

You stink of wet dirt. 

TT: Alright, but tell me that wasn’t a spot-on guess.   
TT: Tell me that then try to meet your own gaze in the mirror afterwards.   
TT: It ain’t happening. 

GT: I havent even watched avatar in like a week or something so take THAT mr know it all smartypants. 

TT: That sure was someone’s point you just proved. 

GT: Oh hey also um. Can you please please never ever put a tracker in me ok. 

TT: What if I already did?   
TT: What if my overblown and inaccurate estimation of your current occupation was simply part of a wider deception, designed to take advantage of your unseemly faith in literally everyone you’ve ever spoken to? What if it was... a ruse?   
TT: What if it was...

GT: A distaction yes yes.   
GT: Look as mentioned i find myself in some pretty grievous peril so hows about i sign you up for a five o clock whining session and you can bug me to your hearts content.   
GT: Five o clock that is AFTER i am done wrassling all this shit. 

TT: Sure.   
TT: Kinda got a sewer of my own to wrassle over here anyway.   
TT: A sewer so hungry for shit it’s taking all the goddamned shoveling I can do to keep it clear. 

GT: Ok cool save that gross thing for later you know i love your unpredictable and tricksy meteors. 

TT: Metaphors? 

GT: Yeah that. 

TT: If I didn’t know you were physically incapable of anything but the most effronterous sincerity, I’d be calling that bullshit reek out as the sarcasm it should be. 

GT: I have no time for sarcasm i am on a nonstop action rollercoaster packed to the brim with thrills and spills.  
GT: Smell you later bro! 

\-- GT ceased pestering TT \--

TT: Exactly. 

The light gets thicker and the air gets thicker and the scene glimmers golden like a flashback from an 80s flick. You’re elbowing your way through the denser depths of a fern thicket when you catch the first guttural susurrations, but shit doesn’t click till the ferns part traitorously above you, battening back and forth in the gusts from filigreed white lace wings. 

Oh butt out, you say.

The grub flaps its maggoty mouth at you in silence. You push back your hair from your eyes and sweat quiffs it. 

Im warning you missy! 

\-- GG began pestering GT \--

GG: Are you there, J? 

GT: This honestly isnt the optimum time!  
GT: I am caught up in intimate psychological warfare with a mahoosive flying maggot do you mind if i buzz you back in a mo. 

It makes a wet smacking sound of pseudo-tongue on pseudo-lip. You fire a cautionary shot between its horns which it ignores, susurrating with an insolence you feel has begun to border on the luck-pushing. 

GG: If you were to pay interest on the benefit of all the doubt I’ve lent you over the years, I would be quite astronomically wealthy. 

GT: Please jane youre already astronomically wealthy. 

GG: :B 

Im not standing for this, you tell the vast and hovering grub, and you resume your jostling path through the ticklish ferns, determined to cast it from your trail through sheer force of indifference. 

Their stumpy limbs are useless and their mouths are gummy, and the worst a grub monster can do is follow you for hours, staring down from its hollow sockets and occasionally slurping a vivid green drool that stains your clothes and glues up your hair; but nights you have to sleep knowing there’s an oversized maggot gazing blankly in through your closed and darkened window are worse than nights spent ignoring the ecstatic shrieks of crab monsters engaged in conjugal activity in the trees just beyond. 

\-- GT is offline! --

GG: I suppose I may as well get this started while I’m waiting. You’ll see it when you sign back on, after all.   
GG: Um.   
GG: Gosh, saying this really isn’t as straightforward as I’d hoped! 

You break from cover into your clearing and hurtle towards the tower, leaping low-flying vines and vaulting pumpkins too chunky to dodge: sometimes you get complacent on the matter of obstacles and that’s always when they start to disappear at absolute random, flickering in and out just when you most need a smooth path to safety and not an insane and magical vegetable chaos. The grub’s buzzing drones on behind you but you don’t look back for fear that’s encouraging it. 

The door to your tower is always unlocked because the fairy bulls like to shelter in the long cool stone corridor between it and the make-do kitchen. You slam it open with a victorious HI YAHH!!! and pelt for the other end, where a bolted steel door keeps out every single thing on the entire island excepting your own sweet self. There’s a smack as the grub hits the doorway, and another smack as it refuses to accept the doorway is not of a size to accommodate it. 

You skid to a halt and accidentally eject three cans of soup and a semi-automatic before you find your key. 

\-- GT is online! --

GT: Hows right now sound for a powwow then miss crocker. 

GG: It sounds – well, perhaps not wonderful, but it certainly sounds convenient! 

It’s blessedly cool in the kitchen, which was a bathroom till the real kitchen exploded and necessitated lateral thinking. You fling off your boots, clamber up onto the medicine cabinet, and stick your feet in the sink with the cold tap running. 

GT: Look the facts of the matter are that roxy told me what you thought i meant or rather she didnt she just did dots until i worked it out but i got it anyway.  
GT: Oh wait did you want to go first sorry jane. 

GG: I’m sorry I was short with you earlier, Jake. I got rather the wrong impression from some things you  
GG: Oh no, that’s perfectly all right! Please, go ahead. 

GT: Wait are you talking now? 

GG: Aren’t you? 

GT: Uhh im not sure i think im doing both at once.   
GT: Man this is sort of doing my head in.   
GT: Haha. 

GG. Hoo hoo!! 

GT: Heh.  
GT: Um. 

GG: It’s hardly a wonder we managed to get ourselves into such a mix-up earlier, is it!! 

GT: Oh man okay just  
GT: Just looky here for a moment could you maybe. 

GG: Certainly!  
GG: Not a problem at all! :D

GT: Really jane you dont have a clue how sorry i am even though i know youre ALL ABOUT clues and having them.   
GT: Id have been beating myself up over it for hours if all this fiendish fauna hadnt done that for me.   
GT: Ugh this whole things sorta even worse the second time through isnt it.   
GT: Are you there jane?   
GT: Hullo hullo? 

GG: Oh, I’m here! I was just giving Roxy a piece of my mind.  
GG: She’s got an awful lot to say about this, but I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you. 

GT: It certainly does not.  
GT: Say do you mind if i nip off seeing as all this is laid to rest now? 

GG: Uh. It’s all laid to rest? 

GT: Because im smelling like fish and mud and its pretty grody i wont lie.  
GT: Whoa PU just caught a whiff of my boot hahaha. 

GG: Well, in that case,   
GG: If it’s all laid to rest!! –  
GG: Then of course I don’t mind.   
GG: Good bye, J. :)   
GG: (Maybe go and stick some washing on!) 

GT: Huh yeah i WISH i had a washing machine. Ill go pour some soap down the back of my wardrobifier that usually sorts it.  
GT: Laters jane! 

\-- GT ceased pestering GG \--

GG: Whoa, down the back of your what now? 

\---

\-- TT opened memo on board ‘Sanctioned vitriol’ --

TT: If you’ve got beef with the way English handles his affairs, now’s your moment.   
TT: Step forwards. The stage is yours.   
TT: The spotlight swivels to follow you like a pervert’s periscopic camera peepin’ round the door of a public toilet. The full-body tremor your nerves rip through you is illuminated by its hundred watt glory.   
TT: This is your time. 

TG: lol wut

TT: The stage is this memo. The spotlight is my attention. The nerves are yours and entirely ridiculous.  
TT: This session is sanctioned by the big man himself. 

GG: I might not put it quite so... laconically, but I do share Roxy’s general sentiment!  
GG: What’s up, Dirk? 

TT: ‘hows about i sign you up for a five o clock whining session and you can bug me to your hearts content’  
TT: In Jake time, it’s five o’ clock.   
TT: Let him have it. 

TG: w/ both barrells

TT: He’d accept it no other way. 

GG: I really feel as though there’s something I’m missing here. 

GT: Evening all sorry for the delay i hopped in the shower.  
GT: Do you know there was sand in places on me i have barely even thought to wash before?? 

TG: prey continue......  
TG: *pray whoops hehe

GG: Oh Jake! You know, I never did say thank you for earlier. For your advice.  
GG: What with all the hullabaloo, it clear slipped my mind. 

TG: ‘hullalballoo’ she says  
TG: janey evry1 here has seen those logs thers nooooo need 2 b coy ;)   
TG: we all kno wat u 2 just spent yr evnings doin ;) ;) ;( 

GG: There is a significant difference between ‘coy’ and ‘tactful’, and I’d bet my bottom dollar it’s one you’ve never even TRIED to learn to grasp! 

GT: Yowza! One ticket to the emergency room please as rolal just got BURNED. 

TT: I gotta agree, Rox.  
TT: When it comes to the reliable manufacture of devastating verbal throwdowns honed to not only wreck shit but wreak it, Jane’s the horse I’d back. 

GG: Hoorah! :B

GT: But its not a prob jane ive had not altogether too craptastic a day. The monsters that arent dead are hiding and i made total bank on raisins in this mornings delivery and raisins are awesome and the robots been laying low lately and its not raining and also did you know grapefruits arent even grapes even a little bit?? 

GG: You don’t say? 

TG: do u even hear wat u just said jaek

GT: Its true i saw it on a show yesterday.  
GT: Nature is so fascinating wow. 

TT: Whoa, can we back that hard the fuck up? 

TG: hahahahahaaha

TT: ‘The robot’s been laying low lately’? 

TG: hahahahhe  
TG: haaheahaheeheahe   
TG: *gasp 4 breathe*   
TG: lmayoooooooooooooo

GT: Oh god oh no uhhhh what i meant was we totally sparred this morning and doesnt that feel like back in the day haha!!! How time flies when youre having a ball etc. 

TT: Do you know how much it hurts to hear you lie to me like this? 

GT: Good gravy nothing so base as a lie is whats operating here!!!!  
GT: The truth the whole truth and nothing but 

GT ’s skull helmet computer ceased operating due to a severe blow to the head! 

TT: Not anywhere near as much as it hurts to get a backhand from two kilograms of hollow steel.   
TT:

\-- TT ceased responding to memo --

GG: I’m suddenly having my suspicions as to whether that was ever in fact Dirk at all. 

TG: dont even wurry abt it  
TG: even if all dirks hav a soft &lovabble center on the inside  
TG: theyr still shittier shits than nything 2 gals1 human drnking recapatacle could dish out   
TG: ARs been lively 2day i think hes ona roll 

GG: It will be an excellent matter to investigate! 

TG: janey   
TG: tell me tho  
TG: honest nd troo  
TG: do u ever hav moments where ur just rly glad yr not jake 

GG: ... Honest and true? 

TG: honest & true

GG: All the time. 

TG: hi f’in 4  
TG: *5  
TG: hi 5 hoemgirl  
TG: our life is fuckin EZ STREET   
TG: ........ u kno somtimes i feel i should realy   
TG: just.............

GG: I don’t know what terrible thoughts those mysterious ellipses are hiding, but I can promise you right now that I absolutely do not endorse them. 

TG: i shoud just spice things up 4 him a lil bit

GG: Well, I’m still definitely glad I’m not Jake. 

TG: ;) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> coming up next: roxy and her tricks for a spicy life


	2. sounds like a fandabbidozee advetunure miss lolande

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (warning for drug intoxication/POV of an intoxicated character)

TG: hay jake   
TG: hay hay jaek jake  
TG: jjjjjaaake  
TG: cmon dont make me get maedival on ur butt here  
TG: idk wat that means xactly but it dsnt sound comfy   
TG: im thinkin red hot pokers mite b invloved sumwere?????   
TG: sumwree like UR BUTT  
TG: oh BURRRN  
TG: litraelly  
TG: ok basicaly come online or ill send u wizrd pr0ns till u do

GT: Not so fast!   
GT: With these words i now render such a course of action entirely unnecessary. All and any wizard prons averted in the very nick of time. 

The door of your storeroom slams back on the stonework; dust motes swirl, in the hot and stuffy waft of breeze. It smells kind of like something kicked it in the aircon, but if you couldn’t handle a spot of decay now and then you’d be the lad least equipped for island living there ever was! 

GT: Wait what are prons anyway?? I was under the impression it was a sort of aquatic food thingummy am i mistaken. 

TG: jake pls

GT: Rightio. 

The storeroom is stacked with crates and crates upon more crates, and as clerical junk’s your least favorite kind of junk they remain largely enigmatically unlabeled. At your back, the bright light from the kitchen casts your silhouette dramatically down on the dark and grimy floor before you. 

You take a moment to appreciate the nine hells of striking it looks. 

TG: ok lets talk BUISNESS  
TG: igot a thing 4 u

GT: Uh goodness.   
GT: Are you sure this is the sort of thing you should be averring while as sozzled as your humorous spelling errors sort of hint you might be??? 

TG: omfg  
TG: not in THAT way  
TG: srsly boy wat r u like 

\-- TG sent GT file: sweet fruuit o fthe soil --

TG: look do u recgognize this plant??? 

You deploy the imported skull of an antelope from your sylladex to wedge the door wide with its tapered horns, and you clamber up onto the lowest level of crates with your claw-toed compu-shoe flashing. 

GT: Im familiar with a species that bears a remarkable verisimilitude to that image certainly yes.   
GT: Why what is the song and dance about it? 

TG: do u kno wat it does mistr english?? 

On your way you seize up your crowbar from where it’s wedged into a half-open carton of shrinkwrapped toilet rolls; you tuck it through the loop of your belt and scramble on, at a speed that spears your palms with splinters and sets crates wobbling and tottering below you. 

GT: Uh well i assume it performs your standard plant activities of growing and   
GT: And dying and stuff?   
GT: To be honest with you rox im really not savvy to the purpose of a good amount of this islands inhabitants both floral and especially faunal. 

TG: wat if i told u it had.....................  
TG: .................  
TG: .........

GT: .......  
GT: .....  
GT: ...

TG: ............................................  
TG: ..............................  
TG: ..................

GT: Oh come now do you even know what shoddy sportsmanship it is to restart a countdown that has clearly already counted down once!!!!   
GT: I am perching on the very edge of my seat here roxy i am *consumed* with anticipation. 

You drive the wedge end of the crowbar into the angle where the nearest crate’s sides meet and it splinters, and you do it again and again until it’s splintered far enough you can hook in the claw end and prise up the lid, tearing it from its nails with a slow shrieking sound that’s muffled and dulled by the thick stone walls. 

TG: consuumed u say

It’s full of dates. 

GT: Absolutely devoured!   
GT: My rather swank trekking boots poking out the top of anticipations mouth are all that is visible of my mortal remains. 

TG: wow SOMONES in2 vore

GT: I beg your pardon? 

You rummage through to the bottom of the crate but it is absolutely jam-packed with dates: dates sealed up in ziplocked packages stacked neatly one above the other, dates in small wooden boxes with pictures of dates on the front, dates wrapped in paper wrapped in clingfilm with labels reading DATES. Delivery is a game of tame roulette, and some seasons the parachutes bring the DIY kit you need and some seasons they bring belated and spangled Christmas festoonery; some seasons they bring a nutritious assortment of imperishable edibles; and some seasons they bring you dates. 

Bother, you say, with great feeling; and you take a teetering seat on a crate to your back and pop open a bag, frowning thoughtfully down at the distant, dusty floor. 

TG: lol d/w

GT: As you wish!   
GT: What piece of intel were you about to impart when those confounded dots descended anyway? 

TG: ye back to....

GT: To BUISNESS? 

TG: precisley 

Halfway through the first bag you remember the consequences of the last time you ate this many dates in one go, and you fling it away without a second thought. 

Dates tumble down to the dusty stone floor like sticky confetti. You would not live that day again for anyone! You would not live that day again even for the graphic novel adaptation of Catwoman as electrifyingly portrayed by one Halle Berry, your only company that long, uncomfortable afternoon brought on by absent-mindedly working through two bags of dates in front of _Good Luck Chuck_ (the most incontrovertibly boss part of that season’s delivery). 

TG: u got that pic of the plant i jst sent   
TG: wat u got 2 do is find it  
TG: u with me jakey

(There’s leisurely perusing the cream of your comics collection when the fancy takes you, and there’s dully studying the same page for hours on end because an unexpected serving of chocolate surprise has you stuck on the pot with just one mag for company. And the reason you’re steering clear of whole bags of dates forever is embedded deep within that repulsive reality.) 

GT: I am with you every step of the way and every leg of the journey i assure you. 

TG: k good well u find it nd then  
TG: u eat it  
TG: bu t not the leves that shits cray   
TG: who even DOES a thing like that  
TG: u find it and u jst eat the roots ok

GT: Sure i can do that no prob.   
GT: Wait why am i doing that? 

TG: u questonin my decisions enlgish

GT: Not in the slightest i know my best interests are held to the very bosom of your heart!   
GT: I just reckon a touch of contextual info would not go awry about now for perhaps my own self orienting purposes. 

TG: well in that case let me tell u  
TG: this is a heavn  
TG: *heavan  
TG: *haven  
TG: frm the tormemnts manifold we al lknow di-stri visits upon u  
TG: so reglular u may as well b  
TG: in jersualem??   
TG: idk ma bible knowlegde is not wat it could be  
TG: didnt they all get f’d over in it at 1 point or anothr???   
TG: nnyway god is a vegful god  
TG: omg *vengerful  
TG: as is strider  
TG: thats the point  
TG: nd i am gabribel or some shit com 2 sweep u away 2 paradase

GT: This plant is the key to my eternal salvation as provided by a tipsy angel from her home far across the seas mighty and tempestuous plains?? 

TG: this is relgion 101  
TG: srsly get a clue jame

GT: *Jake. 

TG: thx hon  
TG: you in then???   
TG: (in b4 ‘gee wizz this sounds like a fandabbidozee advetunure miss lolande’) 

GT: Heck yes this sounds like a superlative adventure sans pareil!   
GT: Oh god fuckin dammit rox. 

TG: hahahaaha  
TG: get goin kiddo ;) 

On your way back down you accidentally lodge the discarded contents of half a bag of dates between your bare toes. 

You peel them out, and you get going.

\---

It’s not raining but the air is close and wet and five minutes after leaving the stony cool of your tower you’re chest-deep in foliage dripping condensation, sweating wetter than a rainfree day should make you. This way isn’t a way you tend to frequent, and any route you’ve ever worn has been lost to time and the great scratchy green plants currently taking issue with your shorts. 

You catch the skitter of movement on a tree trunk to your left. 

TG: found it yet???? 

GT: Uhh nope im battling ever bravely onwards though. 

TG: no yr not  
TG: u r totally disrtactd right now dnt even lie 2 me

GT: No way man im hacking down flora left right and center this very minute with my awesome and one hundred percent authentic explorers machete! 

TG: wowow sure kk im hells of covninced gd job jake u go boy!!! 

GT: Just kidding haha! 

TG: u dont say

GT: Ive actually found this sweet tarantula.   
GT: Here look ill take a snap. 

\-- GT sent TG file – ‘Sweet tarantula’ --

TG: omg fuck no im not opneing that

GT: Its on my neck now its got all these furry little feet.   
GT: Aw its pretty ticklish hehe.   
GT: :) 

TG: last warging jake  
TG: ‘war gin’ wow story o/ my life

You reluctantly coax the sweet tarantula back onto your hand and when you plop it down into the shadows of the jungle floor again it’s concealed itself in the depths before you’ve even come to terms with the loss of its fuzzy eight-footed scamper across your skin. You take a moment to wish it well. It’s a tough jungle out there. 

You get a move on. 

GT: Hey rolal clap your peepers on this one will you. 

\-- GT sent TG file – ‘A likely suspect’ --

TG: first thigns 1st  
TG: is it a spider

GT: Its not though ill be darned if i know what your beef with spiders is. 

TG: k ill crack this bayby open

GT: I mean what a daring dream am i right??   
GT: To combine the finest qualities of spiderman with the elegance and nobility of the insectoid kingdom.   
GT: God how i wish i could know their scuttling arachnid world. 

TG: sssssshshshsshhsshuuush a moment im checkin out yr pix  
TG: aw YEAH nice 1!!   
TG: this is the plant alrite  
TG: now off w/ the roots + in2 th emouth  
TG: gogoogogogo!!!!! 

The bank’s steep but the greenery’s no higher than your knees: you dig your boots into the soil, seize one aggressively spiked pale flower by its fat green throat, and tug till it bursts from the ground in a black shower of wet dirt and startled invertebrates. 

You stumble backwards clutching a trailing two foot train of kava root. 

TG: got it? 

GT: Got it! 

The roots are curled and damp and thin like a nest of earthworms but when you take a bite it’s a heck of a lot chewier than any earthworm you’ve ever eaten! 

You tear the leaves from their roots and leave them there. Roxy’s instructions were as clearly defined as Lara Croft’s abs, and the whole deal’s quite adventurous enough you’ve no wish to spice shit up just yet. 

\---

TG: somwerhe comfy is gunna be best 4 this delilcat operation

flickers up just as you emerge hopping into your clearing, your right boot shuffled into your sylladex, indelicately wringing out the sweat from its corresponding sock. 

TG: delilcat omg  
TG: perf  
TG: i got 1 right here com to mommy lil cat  
TG: prrrr who loves u tahts right i do  
TG: yr tatranluas can go FUCK themselfs this is the furry feets im al labout   
TG: *tartanluas  
TG: *spidres  
TG: *bugs

GT: The other day i was nearly swatted from existence by the furry foot of an irate cat so i cant say between me and the feline genre theres exactly a surplus of love mislaid.   
GT: But comfy i can do i know just the spot. 

TG: then plz assume the position.........  
TG: ill b ovr here jst chillin like the rad as fuck chick i am  
TG: w/ my gd bro jacky d

You place your palms on the nearest pumpkin and heave yourself up, and for a while you sit in the weak green sunlight with your back to the stalk, chewing on your mouthful of stringy wood, kicking your feet, wondering just what exactly this is supposed to achieve and occasionally spitting soil when you realize you’re salivating mud. Maybe technically washing off the roots before eating them might have been a sensible idea, but when you think of the hells of adventures that could have never even happened if fearless expeditioners had stopped to think about such trifles as cleaning shit and having sensible ideas, you feel reassured that headlong is the only correct way to strike out on any escapade. 

A splinter digs into your tongue and the blood reminds you of something you really should have found out. 

GT: Ms lalonde i need your urgent help and guidance on a matter most pertinent! 

TG: sure bb wahts up

GT: I have found myself in a rather embarrassingly sticky situation here and i fear you are the only lady who could possibly wiggle me free. 

TG: a stikky sitauton huh  
TG: pls elbaborate

GT: Do i spit it out or do i swallow?? 

TG: omfggggg

GT: The choice greenery you recommended to me i mean.   
GT: It is rather clogging up my mouth at the moment as well as tasting like if you will pardon my french the butt end of an unhygienic donkey. 

TG: u dont evemn  
TG: omfg  
TG: giv me 1 min jake i got 2 talk to   
TG: sombudy

GT: Take all the time you need i will be here eagerly awaiting your return. 

Her name blinks on and off in a steady pink pulse and when you find that you’re coughing it puts effort on your jaw like it’s lead-weighted. What if your airways clog? You’re through here. You’re getting rid of the wood. Your hand on its way to your mouth is slow and heavy and bewildered in its motion as a newborn sky whale. 

A short few seconds after your hand reaches your mouth you feel your hand reach your mouth. 

You carefully extricate the coiled and sinewy roots. You dump them and spit. Your spit consists primarily of dirt and splinters. 

Blimey, you say, and shift to lie down, the ridges of the pumpkin digging in to your back in a way you’re aware of but barely fussed by. You reckon you’d be fussed if it was your back. Not that it’s not your back. If it and your back were one. Not that they’re not. That it’s not. 

You roll onto your side with your face pressed into the hollow at the root of the stalk, and fumble at the fly of your pants to activate speech-to-text on your compu-belt. 

In the dustiest corners of your brain, something is buzzing up a storm. 

\-- GT began pestering TT \--

GT: Hey dirk have you ever had that feeling where your

TT: Yeah? 

GT: Where whoa.   
GT: Whoa. 

TT: You alright there? 

A sudden and vast comprehension of Time in all its infinite ineradicable glory overwhelms you absolutely and fleetingly. 

Huh, you say. 

TT: You there at all? 

GT: Oh yeah i got distracted.   
GT: Have you ever had that feeling where your bones are made of air because im having it. Hahaha whoa. 

TT: Dude, any high you’re hopped up on from huffing your deodorant is solely psychosomatic.   
TT: That roll-on shit ain’t solvent, we discussed this last time. 

GT: No no no this has nothing to do with deodorants roll on or otherwise inclined.   
GT: Im just  
GT: Im just saying the world is kind of awesome also incomprehensible to mortal mind but mainly awesome am i right????? 

TT: Both our worlds are roughly as awesome as a boot to the teeth with a shit-smeared steel toecap, and you know it.   
TT: The fuck’s wrong over there? 

GT: Hahahahaha whats wrong he says.   
GT: More like what ISNT RIGHT!!! 

TT: That’s literally the exact same thing. 

GT: Perhaps the subtle difference of tone has you flummoxed mr im-really-literal-and-mega-obnoxious but i can assure you that  
GT: Wait at least that means youre actual dirk your alts are never this 

TT: This what?   
TT: ... Alright, you’re playing it coy. I can live with that.   
TT: Seriously, bro, it’s not like I’m gonna be surprised if you’ve managed to fuck your shit up over there. You can just tell me.   
TT: I mean, I’d probably be able to deal with it better from the future and the other side of the ocean than you could from right there on the scene. Hyper-competence is kind of my jam. 

GT: Whoa hang on im  
GT: Hahahahahaha oh man. Trust you to 

\-- GT ceased pestering TT \--

TT: Trust me to what?   
TT: Oh, for Christ’s sake.   
TT: This broship can only take so much enigmatic charm, Jake, and that’s a meter I keep maxed out myself.   
TT: Message back. 

A cursory scrabble at the cool steel hands closing around your throat does the opposite of nothing and with a jerk that leaves you winded you find you’re hurtling for the ground in a moment that stretches and snaps back like an elasticated waistband caught on a doorknob, and as your glasses somersault slowly from your ears the world wipes out into shades of green. 

The possibility of an eternity spent falling performs an alluring wiggle before you. You give it some serious contemplation while the air rushes slo-mo in your shell-likes. 

So awesome. 

And then time catches you: you smack the back of your head on a moderately sized pumpkin and slide down it to the dirt, as the robot stomps your glasses. A damp towel you captchalogued to return to the bathroom and then forgot about ejects from your sylladex and falls, clammily, across your legs: you think you may have been trying to equip new glasses, but you’re not entirely sure. 

You equip new glasses anyway. The robot turns to you with the smooth purr of joints you’ve greased to hell and back, and you’d battle if you could move but the uncanny weight of your own canny limbs holds you down; so you slump in the soil and watch its approach as its chassis stretches into taffy with every infinite step. 

TG: hey man di-stri sez yr acting  
TG: kinda wierd??   
TG: & like hi sweirdness tolerarnce levels r WAY UP THERE  
TG: so if he thinx yr actin weird i got 2 tell u jaik  
TG: yr probs acting fuckd the heeeeeeeells up  
TG: *jakl  
TG: ugh god *jake  
TG: *no offnese  
TG: u ok boy???? 

Uh status, you say, and the robot’s shades flicker green. Whoa. Whoa shit. 

TG: ok i got auto this time nd he says hes   
TG: ‘got shit all in hand’  
TG: souns p gross 2 me.........  
TG: but idk mayb u guys r in2 that  
TG: oooooh and thats anothr SIKK FLAME laid all KINDS of dizzowwwwn by the head o/ the burns uni thrself   
TG: mizz rozy lalrnde  
TG: *another

You clamp down your oculars but the whistle of metal through air is loud and even despite the hangtime downtime your life’s linear chronology decides to grab before contact – for a moment there you forget which way up you are so time freezeframes while you take a break to reckon it out (the answer’s the right way) – you know what’s what before what is: the machine strikes down and

flashstops

pauses

pats a chilly jointed to your hand to your cheek, so, so very gently. 

Oh lordy, you say. 

TG: on the realz tho   
TG: let me no if yr in trouble jake  
TG: that shits nt meant 2 b stromg but  
TG: idk prhapss i didnt take ur inoncent island ways in2 enouff account or sth??? 

The whirring _chikachikachik_ of the robot’s perfectly calibrated contents seems so loud as it sits to straddle your knees that you make the most shameless boneless escape attempt you’ve never seen evidenced on film, and you flop onto your side with an effortful wheeze. 

You scrape at the soil. 

You’re gonna dig your way out. 

TG: jst gimme a masessge wen u see this ok  
TG: *massige  
TG: *massaga   
TG: *massage ye i can work w/ that  
TG: in a bit babby 

You grit your loins and gird your teeth and while you’re stopped to contemplate that plan’s inherent illogic, the robot seizes you about the shoulders and heaves you back upright. Fancies of freedom fall dashed around you. 

Lets settle this like men, you say. 

The robot cups your jaw. 

No offence intended to any metallic brethren present, you say. 

The robot gazes deep into your eyes with its LED shades blankly burning verdant. 

Hows about it, you say, and your note of desperation escalates from percussional undertones to the score of a full-on rousing chase scene. 

The robot inclines with a ratcheted onetwothree till you’re brow to brow and not a blink escapes it. 

You squint away from its profoundly disturbing and blankly illuminate stare. Switch up your settings bro come on and lets bust a move or two. Youre parky and im toasted its the dream scenar

It hits you like you wish the robot would that the only sound you’re generating is a dolorous keen and any talking you reckon you’re doing you’re not. Aaaagh, you say experimentally, waaaaaaaaghh. 

There’s a second cold mitt sliding up through the tufty hair at the back of your skull you can never quite reach to cut straight, and you’d ponder like you’ve always pondered the odds this is irony made manifest if you weren’t blitzing in and out from reality like an ontological taser; and you’d fight back like you’ve always fought back if your body was currently under more comprehensively conscious control; and you’d give Dirk shit for this like – like you actually tend to avoid giving him shit for the sake of your own self-preservation – if you could only bring to mind the exact facts of his chumhandle. 

Or indeed yours. 

Or indeed his surname. 

Or indeed your first name. 

The world performs one energetic gyration with you as the pivot. Two steel hands meet behind your head with an inextricable inexorable grip. You can’t tell if your legs have gone dead from the weight of the machine settled on them or if you never had sensation in them to begin with or if you’re still fully equipped in the leg-blood department with just a reduced capacity for sensory appreciation of the state of reality, and when 

\-- GG began pestering GT \--

GG: Good evening, Jake!   
GG: Roxy is being characteristically cagey about what exactly is going on at your end, but it sounds to me like there’s a mystery to be had.   
GG: Something’s got her all wound up, and I plan to find out what! 

the shrieks of the jungle grow slower and the green-for-novice lights glow lower 

TG: fuckfukcfffffffffuck   
TG: im rly worried abt u ok  
TG: ima punch dirks libhts out if he put u in truble swear 2 gog  
TG: then ill punch mine out next   
TG: cos lol if this shit aint o/ my creation  
TG: then ill punch out urs jst 4 symettry  
TG: ughhh just w/b ok???   
TG: :( :( :( 

the last thing you catch before blackout falls is the watery green glimmer of afternoon sun washing over the robot’s gleaming chassis 

TT: Yo.   
TT: I caught your log with Dirk just now, so think of this as me checking in to let you know I got shit covered.   
TT: I know there ain’t nothin’ like a fight to clear your head – if you wanna imagine here I wax self-consciously wise about the fact your head’s permanently and depressingly clear, go for it – and if anyone’s perma-down to fuck you up, it’s our guy.   
TT: Let me know who comes out on top, ok?   
TT: Just kidding, it’s obviously gonna be him.   
TT: Don’t stress about getting back to me, bro. I’m more than aware you’ve got your hands full right now. 

and you vow in dizzy fury never to carry out a single other second’s maintenance on its horrifically affectionate frame. 

The brobot offers your cheek a tender pat. 

You’re too high for this shit. 

Your lights go out. 

\---

Your lights blip back on when the day’s a little later and your body aches a little more, and you’re sprawled on your front across the corridor’s entrance, legs in the vines and stomach on the stone. Academically you muse on the odds you ought to be pissed at your ‘bot but you can’t find it in you to care: you think about your arms and decide they feel bruised, and you think about your back and decide it feels bruised, and you think about the chances the unwanted and lingeringly affectionate embrace continued after you passed out and you feel only a sense of seraphic chill. 

Your face is going numb against the stonework. You roll over. 

It strikes you that you are now laid-back both literally and metaphorically. 

You’re hilarious. 

\-- GT began pestering GG \--

GT: Riddle me this janey you are the puzzle maestro.   
GT: What if i was laidback both literally..........  
GT: AND METAPHORICALLY???   
GT: Have fun working that one out heh. 

\-- GT ceased pestering GG \--

GG: Well, that’s simple enough! All it means is   
GG: Oh come on, J, you didn’t have to ditch that fast. :( 

You unfold yourself upwards and take a step that doesn’t sway. You take another. You’re getting the hang of this perambulatory shit. You pad down the corridor to your tower with one hand trailing on the cold stone wall, navigating stray vines with the maximum care, breathing with the maximum quiet: your head’s struck up ringing to an unsocial degree. 

GG: Do you have any idea how frantic we’re going here for worrying over you??   
GG: No one has a clue what’s going on with you outside of your ridiculous, cryptic little missives, even though Roxy finally bit the bullet and told us what’s up! 

In the kitchen which is also your bathroom you fold your glasses, prop them on the water cistern, boot the button on your SkaiaNet hygiene-o-matic. The water hisses softly on the porcelain floor tiles and you climb in. The shower’s hot and the glass walls steam up and you squeeze your eyes shut tight and pay no heed to the fact there’s raucous sound in the distance, indistinct and blurred below the gurgle of the power shower. 

GG: Ugh. Just message back the VERY MOMENT you spot this, please!!!!! 

\-- GT’s skull belt computer ceased operating due to severe waterlogging! --

It occurs to you that you are fully dressed. 

You vacate the shower and boot the button back off again; the water dies with a reluctant sputter. All the way up the stairs your boots squelch sickly. Puddles form in your dripping wake. You take one go at the buttons on your drenched and water-heavy jacket but it’s one too many goes: did you ever have the trick of operating fastenings? Your hair splatters your posters like a sprinkler when you shake your head and you’re really not certain. 

You lay yourself down gently frontways on the carpet, and, while the world revolves slowly around you, you scheme of ways to pass dead time. 

Heh, like there was ever gonna be an option other than movies! 

\---

\-- GT began pestering TT \--

GT: Is this actual dirk??? 

TT: Sure is. 

GT: Ok well that might be a lie as you and yours have been tricksy of late but frankly divination of the truth is not my priority as of right now.   
GT: Dirk or not-dirk ive got to let you know something incredibly important. And to be frank im a little afraid of the ramifications it may have on our merry band of buds. 

TT: It’s definitely me, but whatever, go for it. 

GT: Look i dont want you to panic when i break the news ok. 

TT: Don’t worry about me, man.   
TT: I’m all kinds of psychologically equipped to deal with your many distinct varieties of bullshit. 

GT: Well its about me.   
GT: And what i have become. 

TT: Just spit it out. 

GT: *heaves deep and resolute breath*  
GT: Im psychic. 

TT: Oh my God.   
TT: You’re stoned, Jake.   
TT: You’re not fucking psychic. 

GT: Augh i just *knew* youd say that but the facts of the matter are that i am viewing spiderman 3 and i would swear to god strider im aware exactly what each cast member is about to come out with before they even do!!   
GT: Im soothsaying the future of films and it might sound like a riot but it isnt.   
GT: Not only is the knowledge that i am party to facts beyond most human ken profoundly unsettling but it also fucks up my enjoyment of movie time something rotten to know whats coming. 

TT: Spiderman 3? 

GT: Yeah thats the one. 

TT: You told me you watched that two nights ago. 

GT: I dont know man i dont keep track of that kind of secretarial bollocks. 

She’s going to break up with him on that bridge. You know she is she’s gonna do it! 

TT: Alright. Look, Spiderman 3 was completely predictable anyway, dude, long before your totally inexplicable and mysterious psychic powers kicked in.   
TT: You ain’t got shit to worry about. 

She crosses the bridge towards him. 

GT: I remain unconvi

I’m in love with someone else, she tells him. 

You yelp in fright and bowl your husktop right over with one well-placed clout to the lid. Clairvoyance bloody well isn’t all Professor X cracked it up to be! 

\-- GT is offline! --

TT: Jake?   
TT: Fucking hell. 

\---

The morning starts when your window clatters hard in its frame and a distant parrot shrieks. You peel your eyes open. On the blurred vista of scratchy off-white carpet before you lies an elderly revolver, reeking of acrylic paint and newly blue. 

For a moment you contemplate it, blearily; and then memories of the night before start to seep in like sap and you heave yourself to your feet, lurch to the window, before any gross sticky globules of recollection can splatter. 

You shove the frame up and lean out into the shifting morning shade. 

You see nothing but smudgy green. 

You equip your glasses. 

Orange entrails are smeared gloopily across the vines outside your room, stringy dripping intestinal tinsel as far as you can view. At the epicenter of the vegetable carnage lie the charred, overcooked remnants of the five-foot-plus prides of your pumpkin patch, now blackened, and gutted, and lilting miserably starboard. 

Just in case, you equip a different pair of glasses: but the pumpkins remain decidedly exploded. 

Curiouser and curiouser, you say. 

A small herd of fairy bulls has sprawled itself out across the clearing, keening mournfully, devouring the wreckage. If their scavenging wasn’t straight-up adorable, you reckon you might just feel sorry for the goofy little buggers’ perpetual and ill-fated struggle to remain viable members of the food chain! 

\-- GT began pestering TG \--

\-- GT’s skull belt computer ceased operating due to severe waterlogging! --

The mystery thickens, you say; and you slip on your flipflops (which are also computers), spritz yourself with mozzie spray, and briefly activate Inventory Mode to ensure you are as chockablock with weaponry as any abnormally sluggish young gentleman venturing into the jungle alone in his boxers needs must be. 

Leaves shimmy in the breeze outside, the rustle setting early-morning orange doves to cooing high up in the knotted nested branches. The slap-slap-slap of your sandals is swallowed up by the space and you feel like your thoughts are coming to you second-hand: everything inside your head neatly folded up into bubble-wrapped parcels and stored away somewhere you can’t find them for safekeeping, and you kinda fancy kicking up a racket because heck if the place isn’t deathly still. 

Just a, you start. You clear your throat. A moment later it echoes weirdly back. You try again. Just a man and his will to survi-i-ive.....

You belt the lyrics tunelessly till the lyrics get belted back, and you’re feeling too woozy to deal with the intricacies of echoes so you zip it and hum, picking your way through crushed patches of greenery you’re pretty sure weren’t crushed till the bot stepped in, sticky wet pumpkin guts squashing in your toes. 

Hmmm hmm hmHMMMM...... hmmm dun dunn DUNhmmmmm.........

Fairy monsters dart anxiously round you, hearts flickering brown and rapid in their translucent chests. As you pick past a pool of glistening pumpkin slime there’s the distant crash of something lumbering beyond your sight: the bulls make a sluggish break for it, their wings fluttering weakly in the sunlight, and you try to ascertain ASAP what firepower you can access without dislodging the seashells you captcha’d straight from the bottom of the ocean the other day along with, you suspect, several liters of saltwater – 

GRAAAAAARK!!! and the trees shake. 

Oh shut your fucking TRAP why dont you! 

Vines twitch like tripwires and you don’t stop to check what’s tripping them before you’re shooting in its direction: nothing you wouldn’t be keen to kill makes a noise like that. 

It shrieks again. 

Ok ok i get it holy smokes!! 

A flipflop catches as you’re skedaddling from the scene and there’s a moment of panic – you need to retrieve it from the vine it’s latched under but you can’t hold two guns in one hand, and you can’t unequip just one of them because that’s the whole flipping function of double pistolkind in the first place and abstrata don’t _allow_ such pedantic tomfoolery – you drop a gun and grab your shoe and grab back the gun again, hurdle a pumpkin that disappears as you land and race for the tower. 

GRAAA– 

You shove back the door and skid in around it, drive home the bolt as a bellow rattles the tin mugs on their hooks above the sink and sets your cutlery box to jangling. The bellows bellow on, hoarse and raucous. You drop your pistols to the table and you spend a moment wheezing: a run like that wouldn’t be a challenge if you didn’t still have fog for a brain. 

GRAAAARK!! it comes again. Even this side of a foot of solid stonework you feel short hairs rise up on you from top to toe. 

The window in your makeshift kitchen is high and small because your grandma only built this space to be a bathroom, but your dazed gaze catches nevertheless the whip of a long white tail in the pumpkin-smeared space outside your tower. 

A sense of unease churns within you. 

You skirt the long-dead transportalizer and hotfoot it up the stairs. 

A chats what im after. Just set my mind at rest haha. 

Blue paint is smeared hieroglyphically up the stairwell. 

Um. 

Your mouth tastes like old pennies, but you’re not sure you want to know why. 

Just sort out some discrepancies in my account of the evening versus perhaps um. Versus realitys account of the evening perhaps. 

Several minutes of intensive exploration later, you find your skulltop in your sylladex, sharing a compartment with the largely putrefied head of a levitating sheep monster that you stashed some weeks back with the intent to bleach it free of flesh. You prise the skulltop from the skull. It is not looking hygienic. You set the skulltop aside for intensive cleaning and toss the skull out the window. 

Your compu-belt flickers sickly green and refuses to turn on. When you shake it, you hear something sloshing back and forth within. 

You root your compu-shoe out from below your bed. There are still dates embedded between the toes from your swiftly foreshortened sojourn in the stockroom yesterday, and you set it aside with the skulltop for post-haste cleaning. 

You find your compu-coat wadded up in your wastepaper bin, flashing a frantic cycle of orange pink blue, and you tug it on so fast you don’t even notice it’s inside-out till the notification for Roxy’s memo pings up right-to-left. 

\---

\-- TG opened memo on board ‘GT fone home’ --

TG: think of this like a sumonning charm or w/e  
TG: we call his name nd far far away @the bottom of like  
TG: a snake pit  
TG: a cradel of flames  
TG: a drmaticlaly z-zaggin fissure in a mountanside  
TG: he HEARS it and reinvivorated fights his way the fuck bak out!!!!!!!   
TG: resurection of the dumbass islond boy = COMPLETE

GG: Roxy, you know I’m all in favour of trying to get hold of him! I’m just really not certain this is the most efficient way to go about it. 

TG: ughhhhhhh i kno   
TG: im jst woried :(:(:( 

GG: If only there was a piece of kit in his computer collection designed with an automated homing device... 

TT: A daydream I’m sure we’ve all entertained, Janey.   
TT: Activate the compu-collar and he’d be yours to direct. Yours to agitate the technological strings of.   
TT: Your will: his command. 

GG: Erm, gosh! That’s not exactly what I was suggesting, Dirk. 

TT: To be perfectly fuckin’ honest with you, Janey, that’d be the simplest solution to the vast and ridiculous majority of all our Jake-centric problems.   
TT: Program the coordinates and you could have him just where you want him, wherever that might be. 

GG: Oh, hang on just one goshdarned minute...

TG: lol hey man ;)   
TG: wats dirk up 2? 

TT: What’s Dirk up to, she says, and yet I am he.   
TT: Check it out, the drunk chick’s talking gibberish again.   
TT: What an unexpected twist this memo has taken. 

GG: There’s no need to get fresh with us, AR. >:(

TT: A guy this cool stays naturally fresh. Basic principle of the thermodynamics of radness, Jane. 

TG: u kno im fond of u lil ‘bot  
TG: but mothaFUCK are u lame somtimes 

GT: Whats up folks!   
GT: Oh and the memo name has my seal of approval haha. ET was a classic of its kind challenged only in the narrow genre of ‘troubled alien seeking return home asap’ by the perennial favorite ‘starman’ although both have of course their own distinct merits. 

TG: ASLDKJA][SDFL;KJ WHERE THE FUKC HAV U BEEN?????? 

GG: Why the heck haven’t you got in touch?? D: 

TG: aaaargh weve been so godamn stressd ovr u/

TT: Two messages in and you’re already so wrong it would hurt, had I the capacity to sense it.   
TT: Overwhelming evidence suggests Starman was welcomed only for the way its shameless shittiness cleared the way for a whole new age of marginally more mediocre shittiness. 

TG: i want an ivnentory of all yr major parts  
TG: a full rundown on yr healhth pls   
TG: STAT

TT: Unplugging the poop chute of cinema, if you will.   
TT: And you do.   
TT: Frequently. 

GT: Uh sheesh.   
GT: Im not sure i got all that so how about a bit of a rewind? 

GG: Yes, how about a rewind! In fact, how about a rewind to the precise moment you sat down and thought to yourself,   
GG: ‘Gracious, I know what will really make Jane’s day – a nice snapshot of myself about to light up a stick of explosives!!’ 

GT: Wait what? 

\-- GG sent file – ‘This pumpkins headed for KINGDOM COME hahaha’ --

GG: Trust me, Jake, I am INTIMATELY familiar with dynamite in all its forms, whether yet lit or not!   
GG: I’ve seen the damage that sort of thing can wreak on an unsuspecting bodyguard!!!   
GG: And I do not appreciate discovering that my friends are fooling around with it like the risks are anything less than immense. 

TG: oh hun <2  
TG: *3

GT: Im gonna be straight up with you now janey ok. 

GG: I’d sure appreciate it!! 

GT: The fellow in that pic is clearly clad in my clothes and that certainly seems to be a signal flare from my personal collection so the reasonable conclusion would be that hes me and contrariwise that im him. And i admit certain puzzles become clearer having seen this image.   
GT: But to be frank my recollection of yesterday is hazy at best and one hundred and ten percent fucked at worst.   
GT: Ill be darned if ive a clue what i was up to the whole stinking day! 

TT: Should have said, man. I could have helped you out with that. 

\-- TT sent file – ‘The apex of modern-day robotic evolution vs. Jake’ --

TG: this is .avi u tremndous f’in creep

TT: If panicked whimpering’s your thing, you might wanna turn the sound up.   
TT: Gets kind of muffled round about the 0:37 point. 

GT: Oh now that is friggin IT you conceited little shitbag you have crossed a line!!! 

TT: (I say ‘round about’ to maintain this approachable front of human fallibility, but if you want exact stats, I got ‘em.) 

GT: Ive overlooked every bit of your recent bullshit but you saw the line just minding its own horizontal business and you went right up and SCUFFED IT WITH THE TOE OF YOUR DIGITAL BOOT. 

TT: (If you want hi-def stills, I got them, too.) 

GT: Oh SCREW you SCREW dirk SCREW your predatory metal selfinsert and screw all this!!!!!   
GT: Jane ill pester you momentarily but i like my people organically grown and im not willing to chat in an environment so thoroughly polluted by MAN MADE PRODUCE. 

GG: I look forward to it. :/ 

\-- GT closed memo --

\---

\-- TG began pestering GT \--

TG: hey bro  
TG: jst wanted 2 apopogize  
TG: *grovel@ ur feet  
TG: janey and dirk already laid in2 me   
TG: & auto didnt giv a shit but auto nvr gives a shit   
TG: all part o/ his eningmatic appeal ;) 

GT: Oh man dont even start im honestly not fussed at you in the least bit. 

TG: dude u kno you can tell me if u are   
TG: id desreve it we both kno that 

GT: The plan was youd add spice to my daily grind and as far as that goes id say MISSION SOUNDLY ACCOMPLISHED would you not? 

TG: well i  
TG: i guess??? 

GT: Hey look im gonna go tidy up after past jakes antics and beg janes forgiveness but im really not pissed at you trust me on this!   
GT: Just at dirk.   
GT: At an assortment of dirks.   
GT: You know i actually recall him setting the robot to beat the tar out of me when i was lost to the mists of psychotropic chemicals??   
GT: You mark my words hes gonna feel my wrath any day soon!!! 

\-- GT ceased pestering TG \--

TG: THAT SOUDNS LIKE A RLY BAD IDEA   
TG: omg why ru u offline NOW  
TG: k well if u see this   
TG: for 1 thign that wasnt even dirk controlin the bobot that waz auto  
TG: *rotob  
TG: nd B you jst make sure u run yr plans by me 1st  
TG: dont go rushin into any revnenge cycles   
TG: not wen di-stri is invloved  
TG: *uh  
TG: yeah thats close enugh actually  
TG: xoxoxo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time on 'thrills and spills': jake declares war on the auto-responder. its a really bad idea.

**Author's Note:**

> (also if you would like to talk about jake then please do [come and talk about jake with me](http://www.toomuchpressure.tumblr.com/)! he is a topic i never get tired of, much to the frustration of probably every single person i have ever spoken to)


End file.
